A little of what we've been up to

I wanted to put out a quick post and pics on a few things we've been up to around here.

In mid October Sophia's class went to the local Shanghai zoo for a field trip. I got to go to a few of her field trips last year as well. It's always fun to go along but also really tiring!! Here we are in the bus on the way there. Thankfully the weather  (and air quality) was great that day!

Sophie's teacher, Mr. Jones, and the class bear

Sophie with the bear. It has a name but I can't remember it and Sophie's sleeping so this'll just have to get posted with the nameless bear for now. Sorry. :)

A baby gorilla! He was so tiny and adorable!

Soph by the giraffes-

The class-

This is China for you. We all sat down for lunch and within moments had a crowd gathered to watch us eat. Taking pictures, patting their heads, ugh! Just let them eat!!

Baby tiger! He would meow just like a cat does. Adorable.

The bears were fascinated with our presence. You could tell they were used to people throwing them food bc they came right over to us and just stared at us like, where's my steak?

During the October holiday our ayi, Tai Ping, went back to her home province to see her family for the week. She brought us back some of these fruit. It looks like a tomato, grows on a tree, has skin like a tomato, but is very gooey and mushy on the inside. You peel off the skin and then eat the inside with a spoon. I didn't like them at all but Ben did. That guy will eat almost anything out here. :) Ben did some research on it and we think they are persimmion fruit.

This was another fruit thing that Ben brought home from work. They are called dragon eyes. They have a thin rubbery skin on the outside, you peel it off and then on the inside are these rubbery slippery gelatinous balls.

You bite into the fruit and it exposes the pod on the inside- the 'eye'. Again, it was a no-go for me but Ben and Sophia liked them. Such weird things here... :)



We have had the pleasure of having several of our friends' parents visit over the last few weeks and they have all been baking us wonderful English goodies to try.
My good friend, Liz, had her beautiful baby boy, Riley, on Oct 6, one day after her parents arrived to help out for a few weeks. Great timing! A week later Liz had a bunch of us over to all officially meet the little man. Really, it was so a few of the husbands could meet him- us girls were there the day of delivery. :)
Anyway, Liz's mom, Anne (awesome lady), made us a traditional treakle sponge and custard that morning. You pour golden syrup on the bottom of your pan, then add the cake-like mix on top and bake. Looks tasty, right?

Once it's baked you put some into a bowl and then pour english custard on top. The dark brown on the top is the syrup-soaked cake. It was really really good. Very rich, very tasty. :)

For the past 3 weeks my other good friend, Sally, has had her mom here visiting (another awesome lady).
Several months ago when I was in the local grocery store I happened upon an odd dessert called spotted dick. Yup. Liz got really excited saying it was really tasty. It looked like raisin cake. But, seriously, how good can something with that name be??
Anywho, fast forward to Sally's mom being here. Last Friday Sally had us girls over for coffee and some spotted dick with custard. Seriously, why can't they name it something else???
So, this dessert seems to be hard to make! There's this mix that you put into a bowl and then you seal the bowl and float it in a big pot of water and it cooks it that way. It takes an hour! After it's cooked through, you put some into a bowl and pour custard over it. Sally's mom made it special with lemon zest and raisins and it was so good! Very light and just the right amount of sweet. These English women can make som seriously tasty stuff!

So, this past Saturday we had a dinner at our friend, Edmee and Theo's, house. It was really fun- we hired a chef to come cook us some traditional Chinese food. It was so cheap- about $30/person and we had about 10 different courses. Egg rolls, dumplings, chicken wings, salad, fish, chicken, peking duck, beef and more. So much food!
Because we had been enjoying all these English desserts in the past few weeks I had volunteered to bake some traditional American ones for that evenings dinner. Everything was completely from scratch except I used canned pumpkin. I'd never before made homemade graham cracker and traditional pie crusts. It all came together well, though! Pumpkin and key lime pies.

Some of our friends were not huge fans of the pumpkin- many had not ever tried a traditional American pumpkin pie before! The key lime was a huge hit. Ben was hoping they would all hate it so he could eat it all. ;) Overall, a very fun evening.


Here is a picture of Cooper at school with his personal aid, Emma. They are together every day, all day, at school. She works with him tirelessly to learn new things. She is a real blessing to our family!

During the week of Halloween Sophie's school was celebrating Book Week. This year they were focusing on the books by Roald Dahl. On the last day of the week (Friday) all the kids and teachers got dressed up as a Roald Dahl character.
Here is Sophie dressed as a witch (he had a book called The Witches and I had the costume so, there you go), and she is walking with her teacher, Mr Jones. Can't remember who he was dressed up as...

Here's her whole class that morning- so cute!

One more cute pic. Soph and Ben were playing the other day and she wanted to play doctor. This involved Ben pretending he was sick and she would ask questions and write things down. Here were her instructions-

"medicine one
in the afternoon"
"sore throat
and tired"
"come in the morning"
"doctor"
Sophia

I love spelling phonetically. SO cute!

So, that's a little of this and that from over here. We've been very busy with everyday life stuff and things are going well.
I was going to try and cook a turkey next week for Thanksgiving but, alas, the cheapest turkey I can find is over $100 so we are simply going to the clubhouse for a buffet that night instead. The kids still have school all week and Ben still has to work all week so there's really no point in doing something fancy anyway.
Ben's birthday is also next Thursday and you have NO idea what a pain it's been to try and find presents for this guy! It's hard enough when we're in the U.S. and then tack on being here where it's so hard to find anything... maybe I'll just make him another key lime pie. ;)

We have many more things coming up in the next few weeks- especially with the holidays coming up. I'll try to be better and post more often next time. I know, you've heard that before. :)
Thanks for keeping up with us! God bless!!